He gets up very early in the morning. He spends as little time in bed as he possibly can. He gets up, and then he studies for a while, drinking his first coffee of the day. He doesn't eat breakfast, unless it's an apple or something bought from a street vendor as he heads to the hospital.

He's finished his med degree, and he's in the middle of his intern year. That means long days on shift and long nights on call, or the other way around. A lot of the time he just sleeps at the hospital in the on-call room, until his supervisor catches him washing his underwear in the scrubs laundry and forces him to leave the hospital, citing regulations about interns definitely not allowed to do more than 100 hours work in a week.

He does about a billion stitches, fixes catheters, intubates, watches surgeries, runs labs, holds patients' hands through MRI machines and CAT scans, passes doctors scalpels in the operating room, sets broken bones, gives teenagers sex advice, and sometimes he even manages to go out for drinks with the other interns--or with Mitz, especially once he buys Mitz that phone.

When he does go out for drinks he gets /drunk/, so bad that all the interns learn where he lives so they can drag his sorry ass back there. They have no idea about his past as a cape, but they all know about Dick. They know Jerel's broken inside.

But they don't say anything. They're interns. They don't get to do the diagnosis.

If he ever does come back to the apartment from the hospital, then he usually brings some kind of take-out food with him. He eats it, then runs it off on the treadmill while he reads medical journals. Then he goes to bed, as late as he can, and gets up very early in the morning.

Mitz figures he won't be missed, so long as he's quick about it. He doesn't see Snooze every night and Jason might freak a little, but it's not like he can just /tell/ Jason what he's doing. And Jerel - Jerel won't miss him at all. He won't notice. Even though Mitz told him he'd be gone, he'll forget that. He's preoccupied, Mitz knows. Him and Jason are messed up and preoccupied.

And it's driving him insane so he has to do something.

He goes one night and does a spot of gravedigging. He's pretty sure it messes up the Wayne family records or whatever, and that there would have been a big explosion in the media if their pr people won't so damn good. They'll be freaked. But they won't squeal. That works.

It takes him a week and a half to find the place. It means doing all kinds to get the money for the plane ticket - and the extra he needs to cart a coffin across the world. But he finds a Pit in Saudi Arabia.

It takes him another half a week to get Dick to stop screaming and punching. Mitz was the same.

It takes a little bit longer to get him eating and talking and thinking again, but soon enough it's been two and a half weeks since he left to get this done and Dick starts asking about Jerel, when they're going to see Jerel, when they can go. So they do a few (honest, Dick insists) jobs and get the money to get new passports, since Dick needs one, and get home.

They go to Jerel's apartment first. Mitz hangs back in the hallway when Dick knocks on the door.

It is literally the middle of the goddamn night and Jerel has had all of two seconds sleep. His supervisor kicked him out of the hospital again yesterday and there's a hemispherectomy happening tomorrow that he would give his own left half of the brain to scrub in on.

So he's not impressed when there's a knock on the door. He figures it's probably cops--and the thought shoots a streak of pain through him--warning about some burglar on the loose. Hah. If only they knew.

He doesn't bother cleaning himself up. He's going right back to bed after this, so his hair's all sticking up and he's wearing one of Dick's old police academy shirts, one that no longer smells like Dick but Jerel pretends it does. His stomach rumbles pretty loud as he drags himself to the door, and he's scowling when he does open it.

When he sees Dick, he shorts out the lights in the whole apartment block in shock, and stands there just staring at him.

Dick is three kinds of tired. The's jet-lagged, emotionally exhausted and coming back to life will take it out of a guy. He looks tired. He feels tired. He doesn't even have the energy to put on a show and make himself seem a little more vibrant. That's how tired he is.

But as soon as he sees Jerel, he sweeps him into a hug and lifts him up. There are tears. Dick doesn't care. He doesn't even have words right now. There can be tears.

Mitz looks at them for a second, smiles, and heads off. He needs his bed. He wonders if he can get some sleep before Jason finds him and rips him a new asshole.

When Dick grabs him, it sinks into Jerel's brain that this is fucking /real/, real or the realest dream he's ever had, and he throws his arms around Dick and squeezes him tight enough to cut off air.

And he cries. Yeah, he bursts into tears, he's sobbing deep, gasping sobs, he's aching inside. He's cried a dozen times since the funeral, just randomly, but this is like that very first cry when he was finally alone, after Bruce left, when he curled up in their bed and screamed.

"Okay, gorgeous," Dick murmurs, stroking Jerel's hair. "I know. I know. Let's get inside." And he /does/ know. Jerel's reacting the same way he wanted to when he found out that his brother came back from the dead. Not exactly like how he felt when Bruce came back, but that was complicated as hell. But Dick knows, he remembers, that it's really hard to just accept this.

After feeling all his muscles and bones and thoughts knit back together in the Pit, though, Dick finds everything a little easier to accept.

He doesn't say anything more. He just keeps Jerel off the ground and walks inside their apartment.

Jerel is pretty damn distraught. He likely doesn't notice the movement, nor even how dark it is, and he can't begin to focus enough to get the lights back on. He didn't even register Mitz being there. But 'gorgeous' hits him right in the gut, solid as a punch.

Dick brings Jerel straight to the couch and sits him down, holds his hand. This could turn angry any second, he knows that. He wants Jerel to be able to get a good punch in. "I'm here," Dick says. "I was gone, but now I'm not and I'm here."

Jerel doesn't want to just hold hands, he wants to climb all over Dick and wrap around him like a sloth around a tree branch. But before he can work out any co-ordinated movements he has to stop crying. He drops forward and puts his head on Dick's knee, trying out some deep breathing. He says, after a couple of breaths, "No, this is a dream. 'S gotta be."

Dick rubs Jerel's back and hums quietly for a minute. He's a little dazed, it has to be said, for a lot of different reasons. So he falls into the Comforter role easily before he speaks again. He just sits and hums a tune that his grandmother taught him years ago and rubs Jerel's back.

After a few minutes, he speaks again. "I'm not a dream. Promise you, gorgeous," Dick murmurs. Then he chuckles quietly. "Look." He pinches Jerel's arm as gently as he can while still counting as a pinch. "Not dreaming."

Jerel looks at the pinch, then, with another deep breath, pushes himself back up sitting. He's very close to Dick, and he blinks the last of the tears out of his eyes so he can see properly as he raises his hand to cup Dick's cheek. He examines Dick's face for a very long moment. (Unconsciously, he brings the lights up slowly as he does, 'til they're dim but bright enough that he can see Dick better.)

Dick leans into the touch and smiles, reaching himself to do the same to Jerel. As soon as he talks, though, his eyes kind of - glaze over and become sad. Distant. He looks away.

"There's a way. They're called Lazarus Pits. Guess what they do," Dick says, emotionless. "Your brother, he got me and took me to one. Fought through the guardians there and dipped me in. ...it wasn't pretty, Jerel. And I'm not - /healthy/, I guess is the word. I'm not. But I'm back. And I'm here. And I love you." He looks back at Jerel.

For a moment there, when Dick looked at him, Jerel really believed that Dick had maybe never died. This was his Dick looking right back at him, with all the fondness and amusement and /love/ Jerel remembered--clung to memories of.

But when he talks, he loses all of that light, and it doesn't come back. He swallows. "I love you, too," he says, his voice shaking on the words. He never thought he'd say that again. "I shoulda known if anyone would figure out a way, it'd be Mitz." He swallows again. Resurrection, that's gotta be a bad business, no wonder Dick looks so /broken/. He says, in a small voice, "Look, you made me watch Buffy. And--so--were you--in heaven?"

Dick rubs Jerel's back. He can tell by how thick Jerel's voice just got that he's probably close to crying again - totally fine with Dick, since he's pretty close his own self - but chances are it's not a good idea to let Jerel know Dick thinks he was waiting for him. That can happen some other time.

After a little while, feels too long and like too little time has passed all at once, Dick rouses them both. "Hey. What time is it? We have to get you to sleep."

Chances are, Jerel figured that one out--maybe hoping, really, that Dick was waiting for him. He's come close to killing himself a couple of times, thinking that Dick was waiting for him on the other side. When Dick says 'waiting', that just about confirms it.

Dick sighs in relief. "Oh, man," he breathes, holding Jerel close. "Thank god you said that. I wasn't going to ask, but I really didn't want to be away from you in the morning. I just - I really didn't. I'm gonna need you close, gorgeous, for a while. I'm going to be like a limpet, I can tell. And I'm sorry in advance but I /need/ you right now."

"You've got me," Jerel promises him. "Cling to me as much as you want, please, because I don't wanna be away from you, either. Hell, I don't even wanna go to the bathroom without you." He curls up to Dick as close as he can and kisses his temple. "The--the people at the hospital, they know. That you died. So if I call and tell 'em you're back, they'll give me time off. I know it." If not, he can hack into their systems and give himself time off.

"Let's - hold back on that one," Dick says slowly. "I'm probably going to have to tell Bruce and, and - god, there's going to be a press conference and all I want is bed with you for like a month."

(Hahahaha so my thought just now was Dick screaming and waking up from a nightmare while he was on the road with Mitz and blearily thinking that Mitz was Jerel and crying and Mitz would be all "Nah, buddy. Shhh. It's, it's the other one. Have some water or - something. Here. Sorry. Go back to sleep.")

"We can do that," Jerel promises. The hospital holds no appeal for him, not with this at home. Surely he's got some leave time accrued by now--he'll just take it all at once. If he doesn't have enough, if he has to go to work one day and they still don't want to be apart, then he'll put off the whole internship to next year.

He kisses Dick's temple again and hugs him tighter. "We'll handle everything as it comes, right? Bruce, and the press, and your brothers and Steph and Cass." He knows everyone, now, and he doesn't know if Dick'll want to hear that his death broke everyone into tiny pieces.

"No problem there," Jerel says. He reaches up and combs his fingers through Dick's hair; it's matted with dirt and maybe blood, like Dick hasn't cleaned up thoroughly in a while, and he resolves to get that done. "And you gotta take your time. I can't imagine what it must be like, but dealing with a whole lotta people all at once can't be a great idea."

"We'll see," Dick says quietly. He's aware that the whole family will want to see him and there'll be blood checks and all kinds of things - therapy, for certain, since Dick wants to make /sure/ that happens. People are going to be inevitable. But, for now, he just wants Jerel. "C'mon. Bed. Please?"

"Nope," Jerel says firmly. "Never. I'll do it every day if you want me to."

(Like Jerel ever would've left him after he got Mitz back oh my god if he'd known then he would've taken care of Mitz jesus christ has Mitz even seen a counsellor or had a medical check-up all Jerel's done for him is give him a phone he is the /worst/ brother)

That was their first kiss since Dick got back, and it passed by so fast that Jerel didn't get a chance to appreciate it. He says, "Hang on," then leans in and kisses Dick properly, soft and slow and putting all of everything he's feeling into it.

When it's over, only then does he say, "Yeah. I haven't changed a thing."

(Mitz is normal, don't be stupid, but that's a really fucking traumatic experience and Mitz is just acting like it's nothing, it's not nothing.)

Dick plays with Jerel's hair during the kiss and doesn't stop when Jerel pulls back. He's smiling, so gently but so tired and just looking at Jerel for a long moment. "I love you," Dick says, suddenly, with feeling.

(He doesn't want to make a big deal out of it, okay, it might freak Jason out.)

Dick smiles wider, because he thinks they both need some smiles right now. He stands up and takes Jerel with him, unwilling to let go of his hand at the very least. "Shower. Please," he add, emphatically. "Now that you mentioned it I keep noticing what a wreck I am. Then sleep. Together. Hell, I've missed you. And, I - look, there are nightmares. You should know that. I shouldn't be too bad, with you with me, but there are nightmares."

(Mitz is pretty sure that's how Jason likes it. He doesn't want to rock the boat.)

"I can deal with that," Jerel promises him. "I mean, how many nights did you get woken up after I got out of prison?" he points out. "I'll be right here for you. Especially when you're clean," he adds, teasing. "But even when you're filthy dirty, I promise."

(Maybe it needs some rocking. How they're living doesn't seem conducive to their healing.)

"That is /so/ okay with me, you have no idea," Dick breathes. "I've been back - I don't know how long. I think it's close to a week? Something like that. Time was weird for a while. And - just, being away from you was /hell/."

"Agreed," Dick says. He doesn't mean for it to come out quiet, but it does. He just wants all the badness to be put behind him, now. And, with Jerel, that can happen. He wraps his arms around Jerel and holds him back.

(I'd say a year or so?Jason doesn't like leaning on anyone. Mitz doesn't want to piss him off.)

"Can't imagine they have showers ready and waiting outside--what are they--Lazarus Pits," Jerel says. He turns on the water so it'll get warm, and gets the spare towel out from under the sink--not the spare towel, not anymore, but /Dick's towel/.

(Because he's never let himself be a bother to Mitz. It's a big brother thing.)